BILOXI - Hurricane Katrina cost more lives and destroyed more property than any disaster in Coast history.

Unprecedented destruction on the Coast and elsewhere will prompt "the largest Red Cross response in the history of the nation," national Red Cross spokesman Peter Teahen said Tuesday. Mississippi Coast history, prompting "the largest Red Cross response in the nation's history," said Peter Teahen, a national spokesman for the relief agency.

"It's going to be much higher than anything we've ever seen," said Jim Pollard, spokesperson for the Harrison County Emergency Management Agency.

Hundreds are feared dead, said Biloxi spokesperson Vincent Creel.

Firefighters, police officers and volunteers pulled bodies from the rubble in East Biloxi Tuesday morning, whilehearses and trucks cruised Howard Avenue to load the corpses. In a five-block radius north of Howard Avenue, between Kuhn and Claiborne Street, firefighters recovered five bodies in only a few hours.

Two silver hearses and a truck eased through the littered landscape to retrieve the bodies as one person after another arrived, sometimes in hyusterics, to find missing relatives.

Public officials were skittish about relaying fatality numbers because firefighters, other emergency workers and even volunteers navigated mountains of debris Tuesday, finding bodies all along the waterfront.

The hardest hit areas appeared to be the peninsula in East Biloxi, a four-block stretch of the waterfront in Long Beach and low-lying areas of Henderson Point on the west side of Pass Christian.

Rubble was so thick and high that some areas were inaccessible.

Officials were still concentrating on search and rescue missions, looking for survivors that might have been trapped in debris, Tuesday afternoon. As many as 100 rescue vehicles were expected to fill the parking lot at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum, designated a command center for rescue operations.

Biloxi officials were worried, too, about a shortage of potable water they hoped wouldn't lead to more deaths. The city's water and sewer system is not working, Creel said, and the heat and humidity will quickly dehydrate people who have no access to clean water.

Officials are trying to arrange for one or more portable water stations to be brought to Biloxi, Creel said.

"The nightmare we thought might happen before the hurricane hit appears to be developing," Teahen said.

Frantic family members who fled Katrina made their way to devastated neighborhoods Tuesday, searching for loved ones. Many burst into tears when they took in the destruction and wondered if they would ever again see relatives who dared face Katrina.

"Has anyone seen...?"

"Have they found...?"

The agony on their faces was apparent, but no one could offer them answers.

The scene could only be compared to 9/11, when people desperately sought word from loved ones. Emergency workers moved as fast as they could. Some of them, including firefighters at Biloxi's East End station, barely escaped Katrina themselves.

The East End firefighters tied themselves down in the hose beds of their fire trucks as water rose to the hoods. Two silver hearses and a truck eased through the littered landscape to retrieve the bodies. More vehicles were on the way and a makeshift morgue was set up in Gulfport.

Some family members brought their deceased loved ones to the Harrison County coroner's office.

Joseph Waldrop approached firefighters with a single tear trickling down his cheek. He reported seeing a body on Oak Street. The firefighters told him they would get to it when they could.

He was angry with his neighbors who stayed behind. Waldrop arranged early in the week to evacuate to high ground north of the interstate in D'Iberville.

"People ought to know not to stay here for something like this," Waldrop said. "I knew better. They gave them plenty of warning to get out of here."

Katrina's storm surge overwhelmed the community. Residents expected Camille; they were wrong.

"We've been through Camille," said resident David McCaleb. "We've been through everything. But I ain't never seen anything like this in my life."

Added Richard Wright, who floated to a perch in his neighbor's attic and rode out the storm there: "It looked like a tsunami with hurricane winds."

When the water's subsided, Wright found the body of his 90-year-old neighbor, Francis Odessa Saucier, in her living room.

A devout Catholic, she had lived frugally.

"Believe me, she's in heaven," said Janet Wright Dubaz. "People thought she was homeless, but she gave everything to the church."

Charles Parfait's family was among the fortunate. They survived Katrina in the attic with their two dogs. They lashed 5-year-old Hannah Mays, a family member, to the rafters.

Why did they stay in their home? "Shelters don't accept animals," Parfait said. The family was covered in mud. They tried to regroup on the roadside and decide where they could go with their dogs.

Several people said they perched in treetops for Katrina's duration.

Huong Tran, 50, and her fiancee were among them.

As the water rose, he helped her up a Live Oak, where they spent six hours. "I thought I was going to die," Tran said. "The water was over the house. She prayed to a Buddhist goddess. "I called to her, 'Help me, help me. I think I'll die."

Although most of her possessions washed away, she found her goddess statute on the ground near the tree. She hugged it to her chest Tuesday, saying, "I love her so much. I'll keep her forever."

She said she and her fiancee did not evacuate because they were having car trouble.

Her family had found her.

Aaron Williams found his 4-year-old son's dog, appropriately named Hercules, on a roof a block from what had been their home. Williams clutched the beagle to his chest and sobbed.

"I can't believe it," he said.

When Leon and Lonnie Duvall had recovered their wits after arriving to see the destruction, she told her husband, "Lonnie, lets hang that flag up."

Their son, Dustin, hung the flag from an oak still standing.

"There you go, son," his father said. "Stretch it proud."

After the Duvalls departed, Tera Davidson arrived from Gulfport, desperate to find her brother, his girlfriend and their 8-month-old baby.

Michael Knuth had called her at 11 a.m. Monday, as the storm surge from Katrina rose into his attic. She hadn't heard from him since.

Davidson's shoulders shook as she cried, "That little baby didn't have a chance in the world."

About an hour later, an observer's heart filled with dread, hoping against hope Davidson would not spot the hearses in the debris field, that she could hold onto a slim hope.

At that moment, she screamed at the top of her voice, "MICHAEL." Her brother was strolling down the sidewalk toward her. Mother and baby were fine. They had made it out.

He was worried about one thing: Getting to his van. "I have $2,000 worth of tools in there," he said as his sister urged him forward so their mother, waiting nearby, could see him alive.

Two bodies going into the hearse were identified by the Rev. Jeffrey Clyburn, assistant pastor at Seashore Mission United Methodist Church. They were congregation members for whom he had been searching.

Clyburn tried to put the catastrophe into perspective: "It's glory time, as odd as that sounds, even in the midst of a storm. It's glory time.

"They don't have to worry about anymore pain, suffering or tribulation. It's over. They are with the Lord.